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Mark A. Corrado with his attorney at his arraignment in April. DANA SHAW
The man who struck and killed an Amagansett woman as she was pushing a stroller on the shoulder of Montauk Highway early this year had his sentencing delayed for 10 days on Monday, November 29.
Mark A. Corrado, who turned 29 on Thanksgiving Day, fled the accident scene in Amagansett on January 13 where Yuris Murillo Cruz, 36, and her seriously injured toddlers, ages 4 and 1, were being tended to by emergency crews. He passed the scene again while attempting to cover up his role in Ms. Murillo Cruz’s death.
Mr. Corrado, a West Babylon resident, was allowed to plead guilty to a single felony charge of fleeing the scene of an accident involving a serious or fatal injury on November 10 in front of State Supreme Court Justice John B. Collins in Riverside. Mr. Corrado could have faced up to seven years in state prison.
However, in a deal struck between Mr. Corrado and his attorney, Jeremy Mis of the Legal Aid Society, District Attorney Tim Sini’s office, and Justice Collins, the sentence will be limited to 16 months to four years.
Justice Collins told Mr. Corrado on November 10, “After Mr. Mis’s impassioned plea on your behalf, where he made me aware of circumstances in your background … I decided I would be willing to give you a sentence of one and a third to four years, taking six months off that which the people requested.”
The nature of that “impassioned plea” was not put on the record by either Justice Collins or Mr. Mis. It may have occurred in chambers or perhaps in a previous session in open court.
A second felony charge of tampering with evidence was dismissed in satisfaction of the guilty plea to the top charge.
How the time Mr. Corrado is sentenced to is to be served appears to be open for discussion, according to another statement made in court on November 10.
“I also told Mr. Mis,” Justice Collins said, “if the Department of Correctional Services saw fit to offer you any programs albeit for mental health or any type of treatment, I would not stand in the way of the Department of Correctional Services offering you those programs.”
Later in the session, Justice Collins said that the Probation Department was conducting a pre-sentencing investigation, the results of which will be reviewed before Mr. Corrado’s sentence is pronounced on December 8.
Mr. Corrado told an East Hampton Town detective later on the day of the accident that he had borrowed a 1997 Dodge Ram pickup truck from a friend on the morning of the accident. He was working as an independent contractor, installing “For Sale” signs on properties across the East End. He was to do several installations that day, starting in Southampton, and concluding in the Beach Hampton neighborhood in Amagansett, a little more than a quarter mile from where the fatality occurred.
After picking up signs at a warehouse in Syosset, Mr. Corrado told police he then stopped to gas up, buy some soda and a Black and Mild cigar. He told police that he smokes blunts — that is, hollowed-out cigars that are then filled with marijuana.
He said about his smoking marijuana: “I smoke for chronic back pain … Marijuana helps me sleep.”
He drove east that morning, installing signs on properties in Southampton Village, Bridgehampton and East Hampton Village. In East Hampton Village, he visited a local real estate broker, where he picked up two more signs, to be installed in Beach Hampton in Amagansett.
At the same time, in Amagansett, Yuris Murillo Cruz had just picked up her 4-year-old at Amagansett School, where she was in a daycare program. She put her in a stroller with her baby brother next to her and began pushing it east on the shoulder of Montauk Highway, toward the apartment she shared with her children and her husband, Wilson Murillo.
By the school, the speed limit is 20 mph. That limit slowly increases as you go east, away from the school and Main Street, around the curve that becomes Montauk Highway proper. Ms. Murillo Cruz kept walking past that curve in the road, pushing the stroller.
When Mr. Corrado rounded that same curve, also headed east, he told police he was doing 45 mph. A vehicle pulled in front of him, and he hit the brakes hard, sending his knapsack and his water bottle flying in the cabin of the truck. He then accelerated, again reaching 45 mph, he said, and reached down to the floor to grab his water bottle.
At that moment, the truck went onto the shoulder and struck Ms. Murillo Cruz and the stroller.
“I didn’t know what I hit,” he told the detective. “I hit something on the passenger side front right corner. I looked in my passenger side mirror and I saw clothes … I, at this point, assumed I hit a person.”
He slowed down but did not stop.
About 100 feet from where Ms. Murillo Cruz was lying on the side of the road, he turned left onto Bunker Hill Road, driving about 100 yards until he came to train tracks and realized he was stuck on a dead-end. Mr. Corrado said in his statement that he then doubled back, stopping at the intersection of Montauk Highway and Bunker Hill Road.
Looking west, he could see the carnage he had caused. Emergency vehicles were already gathering. He could have turned right, returning to the scene, but for the second time, he turned left, driving away from it.
At the scene, it quickly became apparent that Ms. Murillo Cruz was deceased. The East Hampton Town Police officer who prepared the accident report noted that the victim had suffered numerous internal injuries.
After emergency medical technicians tried and failed to resuscitate Ms. Murillo Cruz, she was taken to Stony Brook Southampton Hospital, where she was declared dead.
The children, though injured, were still alive. They were flown by helicopter to Stony Brook University Hospital, which houses the highest-level trauma center in the area. They were treated and, eventually, released.
After turning left on Montauk Highway, Mr. Corrado made the first right turn he could, onto Surf Drive, ironically passing one of the last properties he was supposed to visit that day.
He made a couple of turns in the Beach Hampton neighborhood, ending up on Gilbert’s Path. Mr. Corrado stopped besides one of the few undeveloped properties left on Gilbert’s Path and took the truck off-road, attempting to conceal it behind the scrub pine.
He called an Uber, then stripped the truck of its license plates, as well as of any identifying documents in the cabin. As he was doing so, he told the detective, he could hear “police sirens and a police chopper in the area.”
The Uber soon arrived, and Mr. Corrado was on his way home. The driver told Mr. Corrado Montauk Highway was closed and took Bluff Road west instead. Mr. Corrado once again had avoided the accident scene.
Once Mr. Corrado got home, he took a shower, he told the detective — and a hit on a blunt.
After making a couple of calls, Mr. Corrado told the detective, he decided to turn himself in, and called the East Hampton Town Police. He spoke to a detective who instructed him to go to the Suffolk County precinct in West Babylon, where he was held until East Hampton Town detectives arrived.
The interview began six and a half hours after Ms. Murillo Cruz was killed. Blood was never drawn, likely because it would have been irrelevant, given the time lapse in time between the accident and the interview, and the fact that Corrado had admitted smoking marijuana after the accident, not before.
